Norvic Philatelics - GB New Stamps and Special Postmarks

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen - 21 February 2013

This year marks the bicentenary of the
publication of Jane Austen’s most famous novel Pride and Prejudice.
Selling over 20 million copies worldwide Pride and Prejudice has been fi
lmed for numerous film and television adaptations.

Austen’s works, set within the world of the English middle and upper
classes, are noted for their sharp wit, social observation and insights into
the lives of 19th century women. There are six published novels; Sense and
Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion and
Northanger Abbey. Originally published anonymously, the novels have grown in
popularity over the years, gaining academic acceptance in the 1930s, and now
have a devoted following of ‘Janeites’.

The stamps in detail

1st Class - Sense and Sensibility
Sense and Sensibility was Jane Austen’s first published work when it
appeared in 1811 under the pseudonym “A Lady”. Set in southwest England
between 1792 and 1797 it follows the life and loves of the Elinor and
Marianne Dashwood as they experience love, romance and heartbreak.

1st Class – Pride and Prejudice
Published in 1813, Pride and Prejudice follows the adventures of Elizabeth
Bennett as she deals with deals with manners, upbringing, morality,
education, and romance with the proud Mr Darcy.

77p – Mansfield Park
Fanny Price is a “poor relation” living with the Bertrams, acutely conscious
of her inferior status and yet daring to love their son Edmund from afar.
Mansfield Park was the first novel of Jane Austen’s maturity, and the first
in which the author turned her unerring eye on the concerns of English
society at a time of great upheaval.

77p – Emma
Twenty-one-year-old Emma Woodhouse comfortably dominates the social order in
the village of Highbury, convinced that she has both the understanding and
the right to manage other people’s lives for their own good. Her well-meant
interfering centres on the foolish, if appealing, Harriet Smith, the aloof
Jane Fairfax, the dangerously attractive Frank Churchill, and the ambitious
young vicar Mr. Elton, and it ends with her complacency shattered, her mind
awakened to some of life’s more intractable dilemmas, and her happiness
assured.

£1.28 – Northanger Abbey
Catherine Morland is embroiled in misapprehension, mistreatment, and
mortification when she is invited to Northanger Abbey, the forbidding
ancestral seat of her suitor, Henry Tilney, until common sense and humour
and a crucial clarification of Catherine’s financial status puts all to
right.

£1.28 – Persuasion
Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish Sir Walter Elliot, is a woman of quiet
charm and deep feelings. At nineteen she fell in love with a fearless naval
officer, Captain Wentworth. But as he had no fortune, Anne was persuaded to
give him up. Eight years later, Wentworth returns, rich and unwed. What
happens as the two are thrown together in the social world of Bath and as an
eager new suitor appears for Anne is touchingly and wittily told in a
masterpiece that is also one of the most entrancing novels in the English
language.